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Media coverage and speaking engagements in 2014Guest speaker at 2014 Hong Kong's Top Story Awards
Venue: Hong Kong Central Public Library, Causeway Bay
Date: 20 December Appearance on D100 Radio
Show: "Running the race" with presenter Edward Chin
Topic: What's Next for the Umbrella Movement
Date: 7 December Book launch party for Queen of Statue Square, a new anthology of short stories
Venue: Orange Peel, Lan Kwai Fong
Date: 6 December
Author-Panelist at Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2014Panel: "Hong Kong stories"
Venue: Room 202, Duke of Windsor Building, Wanchai
Date: 9 NovemberFeatured in Apple Daily
Title: "Hong Kong's game of monopoly"
Date: 9 November Guest lecturer at Department of Politics, New York University
Title: "The Umbrella Revolution," moderated by Professor Shinasi Rama
Venue: NYU Library Building
Date: 6 November Guest lecturer at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University
Title: …

I finished dinner in Causeway Bay and hailed a taxi outside the Excelsior Hotel. The driver was a middle-aged man with grizzled hair and a penchant for small talk. Small talk is not my thing, much less with a stranger at the end of a long day. As I was disentangling my earphones to signal my desire for a quiet ride, the driver said something that piqued my interest.

“Look at this mess,” he complained, pointing at the snarled traffic on Gloucester Road. “We had 79 days of heaven and now we are back in hell.”
I wasn’t sure if I had heard him right. My impression was like everyone else’s – that taxi drivers were upset with the Umbrella Movement because thoroughfares like Harcourt Road and Nathan Road were occupied. And for those who are in the business of moving people around, blocked streets mean bad business.
“How do you mean?” I probed, glancing at his ID on the dashboard. His name was Lau.
“I mean business was much better during the protests,” Mr. Lau declared.
“I was told your inco…

There is no question that Hong Kong people love to shop; that’s why they call the city a shoppers’ paradise. This past week, citizens took our national sport to a whole new level. Gouwu (購物) – which means shopping in Mandarin – has become the rallying cry for pro-democracy protesters to call on one another to visit busy shopping streets in large numbers to overrun the area. The goal is to get even with the police for aiding and abetting the clearance operation in Mongkok last week. These shopaholics were hard at work in Kowloon even during Sunday’s violent clashes outside the Government Headquarters on the other side of the harbor. They have also found unlikely allies in the United States, where citizens have been staging “die-ins” at shopping malls and train stations by playing dead on the floor in protest of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

Mongkok, or MK for short, is a rough neighborhood on a good day, a cross between Harajuku in Tokyo and t…

On 28 October, the one-month anniversary of the Umbrella Revolution, tens of thousands of citizens assembled at protest sites on both sides of the harbor. At precisely 5:58 pm, they opened their umbrellas in unison and turned the sea of people into a tsunami of colorful blossoms. The congregation then observed 87 seconds of silence, one for each shot of tear gas fired at protestors on that fateful day. It was “the day that changed everything,” the day by which we would forever divide our history: before and after 9/28.

The student-led movement that put Hong Kong on the world map has a modest beginning. A small group of university students had organized a class boycott to voice their anger over Beijing’s decision to renege on a promise — a political compromise made 10 years ago to allow Hong Kong citizens to democratically elect their chief executive in 2017. The promise wasn’t supposed to have any strings attached or funny business with semantics. Earlier this year, however, in an of…

The notion that Asian folks take a backseat in the sex department has been debunked time and again. The Japanese, for instance, make no secret of their bent for dominatrices and cosplayers. Korean men, on the other hand, can’t seem to find their way home without a stop at the neighborhood hostess bar. The Thai and the Filipino are equally comfortable with expressing their God-given sexuality. In Anything-goes Bangkok and No-tell Manila, the sex trade has gone mainstream and become a main draw for tourists.
What about Hong Kong, a place where skyscrapers rise like phallic symbols and animal genitals are eaten with gusto?
It turns out that Asia’s World City is also one of the world’s most sex-deprived. In a recent poll by the city’s Family Planning Association, 20% of the female respondents said they had no sexual desire, while 24% said they did not achieve orgasm during sex. Another local study found that one in five adult males had not gotten off in the last six months. As if that’s …

A week ago, a small army of masked men gathered outside the Legco Building in Admiralty in the dead of night. They were upset over a copyright amendment bill that they feared would limit the freedom of expression on the Internet. The angry men smashed a pair of glass doors at the building's north entrance and urged other protesters nearby to occupy the legislature. Not sure whether to take orders from these strangers, the students didn’t heed their call. Instead, they notified the site marshals to block the break-in. Minutes later, police moved in with pepper spray and batons, and the agitators fled the scene.

The clumsy “wreck-and-run” operation has touched off a political firestorm for the Umbrella Movement. Since the incident, self-proclaimed “netizens” began showing up in Admiralty every night to settle the scores for what happened that night. The challengers question the Hong Kong Federation of Students' (HKFS) ability to lead and the marshals' legitimacy to thwart t…

Edward arrived at the vehicle-free Connaught Road expressway and surveyed the Admiralty protest site, which, until then, he had only seen on CNN. It was 18 October, Day 20 of the largest political event in Hong Kong’s post-Handover history. The 40-year-old law firm partner had just returned from a business trip in London that had kept him out of town for the last two weeks. He climbed over the median barrier and studied the wall of pro-democracy signage written in a few dozen languages. From his elevated vantage point, he could see metal barricades blocking major arteries that connect the financial district to the rest of the city. Protesters had reinforced the roadblocks with garbage cans, wood pallets and water-filled barriers, held together with household cable ties. He took out his phone to snap a few shots, and heaved a sigh.
Xiaobing would turn 15 in a few days and Nai-nai, his grandmother, had baked him his favorite sweet buns. The evening before, Xiaobing had biked the five-…

About Me

Born in Hong Kong, Jason is a globe-trotter who spent his entire adult life in Europe and various cities in the United States and Canada before settling back in his birthplace to rediscover his roots.
Jason is a news columnist, a bestselling author, a practicing lawyer and an adjunct law professor. He is the President of PEN Hong Kong and a member of the Progressive Lawyers Group.
Jason lives in Hong Kong and can be contacted at info@jasonyng.com. For more, visit www.jasonyng.com.

About this site

As I See It is a biweekly column that began in 2008 as a social commentary on Hong Kong's many contradictions and oddities. It also tackles the city's pressing social, political and existential issues. Jason's articles are reproduced in the online edition of the South China Morning Post and are frequently cited by overseas news media.

Umbrellas in Bloom

Umbrellas in Bloom, the first book published in English to chronicle the occupy movement of 2014 and the last instalment of Jason Y. Ng's Hong Kong trilogy, debuts No.1 on Amazon.com in the Hong Kong History category. It is all you need to know about the biggest political upheaval in post-handover Hong Kong: who took part in it, why it happened, how it transpired, and what it did and did not achieve.

No City for Slow Men

Published in 2013, No City for Slow Men examines some of the pressing social, cultural and existential issues facing Hong Kong. It is a treatise on local life that is thought-provoking, touching and immensely entertaining.

HK State of Mind

Published in 2010, HONG KONG State of Mind is a collection of essays that zeroes in on the city’s idiosyncrasies with deadpan precision. It promises something for everyone: a travel journal for the passing visitor, a user’s manual for the wide-eyed expat, and an open diary for the native Hong Konger looking for moments of reflection.